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Mircea
Eliade and the Two Orders of Reality
Jung's influence was
tremendous, and went far beyond the field of psychology. In
working out his theories, his research ranged across literature,
art, anthropology, and numerous other fields of human
enterprise. Not surprisingly, professionals in these other
fields sometimes adopted Jung's insights and made them their
own.
Mircea Eliade
One of these was Mircea
Eliade. Jung and Eliade knew each other, and Eliade acknowledged
his debt to Jung's work. However, he also distinguished what he
did from Jung's theories--there is, for example, the
clarification of his use of archetype as distinct from
Jung's, as described in the Preface to the 1959 edition of The
Myth of the Eternal Return (xv).
Like Jung's work, Eliade's
corpus is deep and wide. No attempt will be made to capture the
scope of his work here. Instead, in keeping with the theme of
This and That, we will examine one of his central theories, one
that has a lot to say for our study. This is his system of the
Sacred and the Profane. Even this one idea generated a
huge body of work, as it is one of the controlling ideas of his
entire opus. Perhaps it is best to focus on the book of the same
name, and to take in its broad view.
The Sacred and the
Profane
The Sacred and the
Profane has an Introduction, four numbered chapters, and an
appendix (which will be of little use to us here), as well as a
bibliography and an index. The four chapters are titled:
I. Sacred Space and
Making the World Sacred
II. Sacred Time and Myths
III. The Sacredness of
Nature and Cosmic Religion
IV. Human Existence and
Sanctified Life
Even the titles are
tantalizing. And dipping in at almost any point yields gems. But
the titles themselves give shape to an approach to Eliade's
thinking. The titles establish two pairs of ideas:
Space <--> Time
Outer Nature
<--> Human Nature
Before we consider any
particulars, though, let's look at the main idea.
Introduction
Eliade, following Rudolph
Otto, suggests in the Introduction that there are two orders of
reality, one of which he calls Sacred and the other Profane.
Somewhat coyly, he defines the Sacred as "the opposite of
the profane" (10). He says that the purpose of the entire
book is "to illustrate and define this opposition between
sacred and profane." One of the many peculiarly Eliadean
terms he uses is coincidentia oppositorum, the
moment when opposites collide and, in some ways, annul each
other. In an extended consideration of duality, Eliade denies
that the Sacred and the Profane constitute "an embryonic
dualism" because, when they encounter each other, "the
profane is transmuted into the sacred by the dialectics of
hierophany" (Quest 133). This hierophany is one of
the brightest gems from Eliade's treasure chest of terms, as it
accounts for one of our central problems: how This and That are
brought into relationship.
Returning to his work in The
Sacred and the Profane, we find that as an academician,
Eliade (after his brief nod to Otto) avoids the question of
whether he believes in the Sacred; rather he adopts the view
that has led me to term his work an anthropological approach to
This and That. He describes the Sacred and the Profane as
"two modalities of being in the world, two existential
situations assumed by man in the course of his history"
(14). While he protests that these modes are of interest to
"the history of religions... sociology... historical,
social, or ethnological study…[and] the philosopher…"
(15) he in fact takes a fiercely (if not always accepted)
anthropological view of the matter. His study examines how
humans encounter the Sacred, especially in cultural contexts;
his sources are almost exclusively ethnological, literary, and
artistic. When he speaks of human existence, he speaks in terms
of "the nomadic hunters and the sedentary cultivators"
(17), or names cultural groups such as "the Mesopotamians,
the Indians, the Chinese, the Kwakiutl and other primitive
peoples" (15).
I. Sacred Space and
Making the World Sacred
Of the pairs of opposites
indicated by the chapter titles. the first, "Sacred
Space," tells us that space is not homogeneous in quality;
that is, some parts of space are perceived of as different in
quality from others (20ff). Those places where theophanies occur
are clearly different; just as the Sacred is "more
real" than the Profane, so Sacred Space is more…something…than
Profane. If we could describe that quality, it wouldn't be
Sacred; Otto calls it "numinous." And just as
originally cosmos was brought out of chaos, so the consecration
of any space repeats the original creative act (32ff). Such
places become "the center of the world" (36ff), and
"our world" is always at the center (42ff). Eliade
says more on Sacred Space, but this is enough for our purposes.
Sacred Space is That Space; but This Space can be made into That
Space through ceremony and hierophany.
II. Sacred Time and
Myths
As for "Sacred
Time," another one of Eliade's great terms is illud tempus,
"That Time," as opposed to This Time governed by the
motions of the planets. That Time is still, eternal--not everlasting,
but of a different nature from This Time, which is ever moving
forward. This seeming motion, however, is actually circular: the
world is renewed with the coming of each new year (77ff). Both
this natural cycle, and the ritual "return to the time of
origins," help humans to create the world anew (80ff). This
is done through such activities as festivals (85ff) and "reactualizing
myths" (99ff).
It is not surprising to
think that Space can be divided into That and This, as we
discussed above.
However, Eliade says that the hierophany can also transform
external nature, such that a tree becomes a Sacred Tree, or a
rock a Sacred Rock.
III. The Sacredness of
Nature and Cosmic Religion
Thus in "The
Sacredness of Nature," he says, "For religious man,
nature is never only 'natural'; it is always fraught with
religious value" (116). Recent thinkers like Mathew Fox and
Thomas Moore have popularized the idea of seeing nature as
Sacred; but what Eliade is proposing here is something more like
Huxley's first point above:
Nature is God, or at least of the gods: "The
gods…manifested different modalities of the sacred in the very
structure of the world and cosmic phenomena" (116). And
later, "The cosmos as a whole is an organism at once real,
living, and sacred…" (117, emphasis his).
Gods are discussed, as is the "perenniality of celestial
symbols" (128ff). Water (129ff) and earth (138ff) are
explored as symbols, as are women (144ff) and vegetation (147ff)
in terms of fertility. Finally, there is an assessment of the
"desacralization of nature" (151ff).
IV. Human Existence
and Sanctified Life
After much important
exposition, Eliade comes at last to the culmination of his
argument: "Human Existence and Sanctified Life." His homo
religiosus has an "existence open to the world"
because "it is not strictly confined to man's mode of
being" (162, 166). All of life can be sanctified (167ff);
there is a micro-meso- macrocosmic relationship between the
body, the house, and the cosmos (172ff). The rites of passage
(184ff), initiation (188ff), social structures (192ff), and
funerary customs (195ff) all facilitate having a foot in each
modality, allowing participation in That while living in This.
Eliade's Sacred, like
Jung's collective unconscious, points toward a unitive
experience among all human beings. Eliade says much about the
Sacred, but in the end never differentiates, say, the Indian
Sacred from the Mesopotamian Sacred, or the Kwakiutl from the
Chinese. Whatever the cultural trappings of the hierophany,
there is a single That lying behind the manifestations.
Contents
(C) 2006 James Baquet
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